Did anyone see this coming?

sell my stocks yesterday! :(

...on the New York Mercantile Exchange (West Texas Intermediate crude futures).  So much for all that conspiracy theorizing about how oil prices would plummet right after the election - NOT!

This is why, whenever I start to make money, I will keep all my assets in gold bars under my bed.  I'll chisel off little pieces when ever I need to buy anything.

Very good idea.  But, an even better idea is the Bush family approach -- buy a heavily-guarded, well-stocked compound next door to Rev. Moon in Paraguay and hide out there until the world economy rebounds.

Rev. Moon (if you can call him a Reverend) scares the crap out of me.  He's obviously a nut, but a lot of people don't know it.  His paper, The Washington Times, had a reporter at atleast one Webb event this fall, and he seemed like a nice enough guy.  But people don't realize where these folks are coming from and what they believe.

One good friend I have over in Norton, an old-school Pentacostal preacher (of the Fire and Brimstone persuasion) went to some kind of free retreat several years ago that was sponsored by Moon/the Moonies.  He said it was unbelievable, and he left early, but several hundred other preachers stayed and enjoyed themselves greatly.

Well, that's what that crazy economic guy who throws all of the money around and screams on set all the time is saying tonight on Hardball, anyway. 

...I think I'll stick to my lucky astrology mood watch and my random number generator.  They've been working great! :)

your mood ring, too.  ;)

See what happens the rest of the week

Then propably Buy

I lost a decent chunk of change today too feel your pain

The biggest problem yesterday was 1) two computer glitches, which have belatedly been widely reported; and 2) the herd mentality.

Honestly, I think our national fear quotient is so high that it will be our undoing. 

As Kathy said, the computer glitches caused the really bad drop at the end of the day.  The main computer system started lagging around 2 PM after the Dow had lost about 200 points over the day so far.  For the next hour the computer lagged further and further behind so that it appeared that only minor fluctuations had been occurring.

Finally, at 3:02 PM they decided to bring a backup system online.  By that point however, over the course of the previous hour, the Dow had lost another 160 points.  Hardly a minor fluctuation and no one knew it.  The backup computer caught up immediately and suddenly it appeared that the Dow had lost the additional 160 points in a minute.  Panic selling set in and at its worst the Dow was down over 500 points.

As the explanation for the sudden drop finally started to spread, the market began to rebound but it was too late in the day for much of a recovery, hence the low closing.  The fact of the matter is, the market performed far worse than it should have (it was going to be a bad day no matter what, but it shouldn't have been that bad) and the blame for that rests squarely on the pitiful response to an easily fixed tech problem.

Someone should be asking some real tough questions today.  When you see computer problems on the Stock Exchange you bring the backup online in 5 minutes, not an hour.

So, Lowell, looking at it another way, you could say you and everyone NOT trading yesterday saved the country from economic collapse. 

today.  What do you say, are you buying? :)

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